Help the pups!

UPDATE: Thank you SO much to all who voted for Penny! She had 670 people vote for her! She ended up coming in a close 2nd place out of 10. I was just psyched that she was chosen as a finalist and reading the sweet comments from people who voted for her through Cesar Millan's site who don't even know us, made me smile. I'm very proud of my pretty little girl!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not even sure who reads this out there in the blog world, but for those of you who do, can you please do me a teeny little favor? Penny Lane was selected as a finalist in Cesar Millan's "Your Dog's Best Feature" contest in the category of "Best Eyes." How cool is that?? For those of you not familiar with Cesar, he's the guy on TV called the Dog Whisperer on National Geographic. Anyway...I entered Penny and was shocked that was chosen out of all the other dogs who entered! The contest runs until July 26th and the winner of each category gets a basket of dog toys and supplies. Since Penny has more than enough toys, I've decided that if she wins, she will donate her basket of goods to the Humane Society of Tampa Bay. That's where she was adopted from and it also happens to be my favorite charity.

In order to vote, you have to have a facebook account. Simply log in to your account and click on the link below, which will take you to the contest page. Under her picture, click the "like" button and that's it! Currently, she's in second place out of 10. You only have to vote once so pretty, pretty please click on her page and vote for her! Penny and her fellow pups at Humane Society would be very grateful :)

Have a great weekend, all! Heading out of town on a very much needed vacation this week with the camera in tow. Stay tuned for a ton of new pics when I get back!

Link to contest page: http://www.cesarsway.com/skin-care-awareness/Your-Dogs-Best-Eyes-Beauty-Contest-10

My bad.

So sorry for the super long hiatus. There have been a lot of not-so-happy things going on in my world lately, but I won't burden you with those details. I've been distracted and haven't really picked up my camera lately (which I do miss), so I don't have much for you. I hate that I've neglected my blog since this is something that I really wanted to keep up with when I started this in the beginning of the year. I'll try to change that and vow to take more pics. It's what I love to do, anyway. And besides, maybe if I put it in writing, I'll stick to it.

Anyways...

I do, however, finally have my pictures to share from my trip to NYC with my sister last month (before everything went spiraling downward). We were lucky enough to have great weather the whole time and we had a great time!

One of these days, I WILL stay here. One day...

Central Park. One of my most favorite places. 

This geese family was too cute! 

For a moment, I contemplated taking this little guy home with me, though I would have had some explaining to do at JFK's security line.

The American Museum of Natural History had a butterfly exhibit where you could go into this room full of free-flying butterflies. There were tons of them and they were so pretty.

I thought they were about to put on a show or do some sort of cheer or something...

Unfortunately, no sightings of Jerry, George, Elaine or Kramer.

Butterfly in the sky...

If you immediately started singing the theme song to "Reading Rainbow" after reading my blog title, then you just scored some points. Who doesn't love a good 80's show?
I know I've been MIA for awhile, but it's for a good (and big!) reason. More to come on that later on (nope - not pregnant. Guess again). I was playing with Penny in the yard on Friday and noticed how my neighbor's tree was sprouting a bunch of yellow flowers yet again. It's definitely spring! I also noticed this bright orange butterfly that was clearly obsessed with these flowers, as he kept flying over and landing on them, leaving and coming back minutes later. He played this game for awhile until I finally realized he probably just wanted his picture taken. So, I did just that. He didn't sit still very well, but at least I got close enough to get a few shots.

Oh - and chances are, you'll have that theme song stuck in your head for the rest of the day. You're welcome.

Relax...

This past weekend, my husband and I went to stay at the Hyatt Clearwater Beach Resort, where we had our wedding reception last year (April 9th). It was a great weekend and we did nothing but relax - which was very well needed! The weather was picture perfect, just like it was last year :)